[cryingontheinside]

Since my depression and mental health has gotten worse in the last few years i barely recognise my self.

1 i have no motivation ( dont even open my letters
2 i am in physical pain on a daily basis and dont know why since i am afraid to go to the doctors appiontment
3 i dont eat healthy or exercise and have gained so much weight
4 some days i dont even brush my haie.
5 i hate my self and would rather be dead than be me.

I really want to change but need baby steps. I can not take giant leaps.

I want to change all aspects of my life particuarly want to find out what is wrong with me physically and to loose a lot of weight. Dont mind loosing weight slowly as long as i do loose some.

I know its a lot to ask but can any one give me some simple and easily achievable small goals to start with or any helpful advice

I could eventually move on to bigger goals, but am easily overwhelmed and when anxiety kicks in i give up and retreat to my blanket and comfort food.

Please help me if you can or if you have been where i am and managed to pull your self out of it.

Thank you so much for reading this

[cryingontheinside]

Forgot to mention i also have difficulty mannaging my finances and keeping on top of my bills.

I know this is alot to ask, but if any one can help me i would really appreciate it.

I already have a couple of goals in mind. Ive aplied for pip which was called dla
If i am awarded it i plan on paying off my debts and buying a juicer to begin some kind of detox or healthy eating

Before i can move on with exercise, i have to get to the route cause of my physical pain and get some treatment.
I am agraphobic and social phobic. Im afraid and paranoid to seek help. I really have no idea how to overcome this, even the thought of going gives me extreme anxiety and panick attacks and then i retreat and hide in my own little bubble. The pain is unbearable and preventing me from exercising or loosing weight.

Please help if you can

[vonmoxie]

I don't know if this will be helpful or not .. but for me getting out of my most recent and deepest depression (which was 3 years in the making and the last year being the deepest pit I've personally known), has required at its base that I first accept where I'm at and accept that it's part of my own process. That as bad as I have felt, there has been a reason for this time in my life.

Just that process of acceptance has taken time.. it can be difficult simply to sift out "I accept myself and accept my need to go through this experience" from things like "I accept I'm never going to get out of this" which is not the kind of acceptance I'm talking about. For me it's taken some time just to get to where I could locate my starting point, just to be able to start from where I was.

To "start from where you are" you've got to be able to be where you are, and not berate yourself about wherever that is. It takes time, as when we are not depressed it is fairly effortless to start from wherever we are, and so it is a skill we have to develop.

So, my advice to you is to keep trying, but try from where you are -- not from a place of shoulda woulda coulda -- I should be able to do such-and-such better, if I hadn't gotten behind I could be in a better place right now -- when you hear those thoughts, wave them on. Personally, I thank mine for sharing and then bid them adieu. Sometimes I picture them on a movie screen and then cross the words out.

Hope you will be feeling more well and soon.

[cryingontheinside]

Thankyou vonmoxie,
I hear you. Just like you its been about three years and this one is by far the worse.
Your advice does make sense to me so thanks for sharing.
I will try to adopt that view rather than beating myself up emotionally.
So i am guessing it worked for you and you are doing better?
Did you get any outside help from anyone?

[vonmoxie]

I am, like you, working through some "shrapnel" -- i.e., my life is in considerable disarray after three years of feeling incapable of interrupting that process. I am poverty-stricken at the moment, among other things.

I had what many would consider "help", at times -- I saw a therapist for a year, through sometime in 2013, but to be honest and it's no reflection on anyone else's experience with these things, but I found it derailing. I found anti-depressants a distraction from progress, and I found the therapy environment to likewise be counter-productive, distracting and derailing.

I've only just turned this corner.. that I feel I've regained some psychological control, although regained is not the right word as I have very much had to re-emerge like the phoenix. My old ways of pushing through, soldiering through, telling myself everything would be alright (the old "fake it til ya make it") was just not going to work for me this time around.

I do think there are good therapists out there -- but I can't personally advocate counting on finding one, because that's just not been my own experience. I've had one in my lifetime that was worth his salt, and he was great. Diamond in the rough. I don't say it to discourage people who are confident in their therapy regime -- if you find something that works that's great -- but I say it to discourage people from believing that they can't do it alone, because sometimes we do find ourselves alone, and it's definitely better not to think of that as a death sentence. I am actually totally alone right now, I can't even explain to you how much. My best friend of 25 years died just a few years ago, and then my husband of 10 years not too long after that. Then I moved out of state for a job opportunity without giving myself much chance to grieve, and as I've struggled with this depression the other people that love me haven't known what to do and eventually have come to be in little to no contact with me. I don't begrudge them this; sometimes people don't know what to say in these situations. Sometimes they are afraid it will be catching and that's actually quite real -- a person's depression can be truly triggering to those that love them and have been depressed themselves before.

I really believe the size and shape of my depression was exactly proportionate to my true sense of grief though, to all I needed to process (more than that grief alone; many things). It did become complicated by some other comorbidities; anxiety and PTSD, and the trifecta of those three together can be quite overwhelming to say the least. I accept there was a purpose for it in my life though, and I found it helpful to do so even before I fully understood what that purpose was.

But I have turned the corner! I am being gentle with myself in my navigation of it, but not fearful.

[cryingontheinside]

Maybe we can help and support each othet to move forward. Sorry for your loss of your husband and your friend.
Im not on therapy as i cant afford it. I am on a waiting list tho......the never ending waiting list. Good luck to us both.

[vonmoxie]

Agreed.